@Whirlibird , what places did you visit? I haven’t been much areas up north but mostly LA

What do you think is good about LA or California in general?

Opportunity.
Ignoring the asinine laws and politics there, there are advantages.
The ability to have a different job before the ink is dry on your paperwork.
The opportunity to be anonymous, its nice to be able to blend into the woodwork as it were. Small towns this doesn’t happen.
The opportunity to hit the beach/ocean and put some fish back.
The weather. We had 60’s yesterday but blowing snow on Thursday.
The opportunity to grow stuff year round without a greenhouse.

Depending on the SHTF situation, you have the opportunity to glean and scrounge from nearly endless sources.
And .gov ‘help’, who do you think will get more attention and assistance, LA or Kemmerer WY in a disaster?

We all know the negatives but how many really look at the positives? It all depends on what happens.

We did the tourist thing, the mouse, museums,
ended up spending more time around Dana Point, being small town types the sheer quantity of people and traffic were making the wife and kids unhappy eventually.

It all depends on your mindset and what happens.

By the way, while I enjoy visiting big cities for the short term, I’ll stick with my smaller towns for living.

@Whirlibird That’s interesting. I’ve always thought rural has a lot of advantages (which I’m sure they do), and looks like I need to fully thoroughly research All Pros/Cons of living in pre/post shtf in urban vs rural

For some reason, my mindset has just completely changed from working normal city jobs to now having the desire to move out and living rural. The city life isn’t really all that. Looks like I’m just an old timer. I guess the more you get older, the more you just wanna get out as far as possible from all the craziness lol

@GeorgiaSaint yes I agree, but what I’ve noticed when it comes to earthquakes (On the videos that I’ve watched), I saw that most people were actually helping each other out. Getting others out in the rubble, providing medical assistance and transportation, and giving relief to other people.
On a worse case earthquake SHTF, I believe urban people would mostly hunker down, because roads and freeways would be closed out, and they’ll just defend themselves in their homes with what they got. And then Urban survival mode comes in.
The people who would decide to bug out, would either have to walk on foot or drive in some off-road way of transportation, in getting to their BOL. Coastal people would go on their boats and ferry away from the US.. but at the risk of possible tsunamis and US Coast Guard

“I don’t believe there is an ideal location – we just seek the area that seems to pose the best odds for survival with the least risks for our own personal and family situation” I agree with this also